


Hope

by Septembers_coda



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Baby Winchesters, Childbirth, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Pregnancy, Soulless Sam Winchester, Uncle-Niece Relationship, the great wall of sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-02
Updated: 2013-10-02
Packaged: 2017-12-28 05:03:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/988002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Septembers_coda/pseuds/Septembers_coda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam’s been to hell, lost his soul, and gotten it back. When one consequence of being soulless lands in his lap, Sam’s whole world is thrown into turmoil, and nothing he has ever learned can help him now.</p>
<p>“What I figure is this. You do your job, like you always have. And what is our job, Sammy? Saving the world. Now it will just have one more thing in it that you want to save.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hope

When the pregnant woman showed up, Sam got that feeling again, one he was beginning, horribly, to recognize: familiarity mixed with dread, walled in by an unassailable _blankness._  
  
He and Dean were in a bookstore, following a lead on a case. His soul still felt tender inside him, like a bad bruise slowly healing, stabbing him with pain each time he bumped it against the wall Death had erected inside him. He stifled a gasp of pain now as he watched the woman, whom he’d noticed on the way into the store, hesitantly approach Dean and speak to him, looking at her shoes (or in their direction, anyway—Sam doubted she could see them over her belly).  
  
He studied her surreptitiously, trying to trigger even a faint echo of a memory. Typical of his reaction anytime he confronted something that had happened during his soulless time, that feeling that he _should_ know her was all he got.  
  
She was rather small, kind of wispy and insubstantial-looking. Her fair skin was dusted with butterscotch freckles, and she had vividly blue eyes and blonde hair. She was pretty in a delicate way, but she looked exhausted, her small frame overwhelmed by her huge belly. Sam felt a sudden thrill of fear that she would go into labor right in front of him—she looked like she could.  
  
Her voice didn’t carry to Sam through the bookstore, but Dean’s did. “Oh, you know Sam?” he said in his usual easy way with women. “Yeah, he’s here somewhere…”  
  
Well, there was no avoiding it now. Sam came forward reluctantly. The woman looked up as he drew close, and Sam’s heart plummeted at the look of recognition on her face.  
  
“Sam?” she said.  
  
Her voice was layered with emotion. Sam peered at her, trying to discern what that emotion might be, what she felt about whatever had happened between them. He would never get used to this, but he had to get better at it. He was responsible for what he’d done when he was soulless, even if he couldn’t remember it.  
  
She looked happy, even a little excited at first, but her face fell almost immediately at whatever she saw on Sam’s face. Her expression quickly intensified; she covered her mouth, and tears sprang to her eyes before Sam could say a word.  
  
“Um… hi,” she whispered awkwardly. “Sorry. I have to go.” She choked on the last words, turned, and fled the bookstore, moving faster than Sam would have thought possible.  
  
“Wait…” Sam moved to follow her, but was suddenly blocked by a little old lady, the top of her head barely reaching Sam’s chest, who was headed for the magazine rack next to him. Sam dodged her and hurried to the front of the store.  
  
“Hey! Uh…” He was brought up short, realizing he had no idea what the pregnant woman’s name was.  
  
“Poppy,” Dean supplied, stepping up to Sam’s side. His expression was carefully blank, but Sam could _feel_ the smirk underneath.  
  
“POPPY!” shouted Sam, hoping Dean was being straight with him, and wouldn’t choose _now_ for an ill-timed prank.  
  
He hurried out onto the mall. He still felt uncomfortable there, though he and Dean had spent a lot of time trying to track down the source of some strange happenings in the area. A mall wasn’t your typical hub of the paranormal, and Sam had thought that this foreignness, the pure suburban commercialism that he was so unused to, was what had made him uneasy. But maybe it was something else.  
  
He didn’t have to look far for Poppy. She was sitting, thin arms wrapped around her belly, at a bench next to a display of fake plants, just two storefronts away. To Sam’s relief, she looked up at the sound of her name, though she looked down again immediately.  
  
Sam approached carefully, and slowly took a seat on the bench next to her, simply so that he wouldn’t be looming over her. “Um… hey, Poppy,” he said, lamely. Now that he’d caught up to her, he had absolutely no idea what to say.  
  
She glanced over at him, but quickly looked away when he met her eye. Sam’s throat closed with guilt—her face was streaked with tears. She swallowed and brushed her hair forward, trying to look nonchalant. She gestured down at her belly. “This makes a dramatic exit a little more challenging,” she said.  
  
“Yeah… sorry. Are you OK?”  
  
“So far.” She turned a little further away from him, edging down the bench.  
  
There was a brief silence. Sam looked back toward the bookstore. Dean hadn’t followed him out, unsurprisingly. He cleared his throat. “So… why the dramatic exit?” he asked.  
  
She glanced at him edgily. She didn’t answer immediately, but finally said, flatly, “You don’t remember me.”  
  
Sam winced. He knew he’d have to explain that part of it, but if she was this upset about it, there were probably some very good reasons why he _should_ have remembered her. He shoved away a growing intuitive dread.  
  
“I’m sorry, Poppy. But it’s not just you. I don’t remember anything from that whole time period—over a year, actually.”  
  
“Well. That’s convenient. Were you on drugs? You sure seem different now.”  
  
“No… uh, I don’t think so. It’s… I can’t really explain it. But I definitely wasn’t myself.”  
  
“I tried to find you, you know. You really know how to disappear.”  
  
“Yeah… sorry. It’s been kind of necessary for me.”  
  
“Well, I had something kind of important to talk to you about,” she said. Her voice had grown progressively stronger. She sighed irritably and met Sam’s eye. “You gave me chlamydia,” she said bluntly. “Might want to get that checked out, if you haven’t. And yes, I know I got it from you. You’re the only guy I’ve been with for the last year.”  
  
She stood up. It was clear that she wanted to jump up and storm off again, but she wobbled on her feet after heaving herself up with great effort.  
  
Sam leaped up belatedly and grabbed her elbow, but she shook him off… and then grabbed his arm with a squeak of alarm as he sank back down, his vision swimming. He felt the blood drain from his face, the air leave his lungs… in fact, he kind of left his body for a second.  
  
“Sam!” said Poppy, clinging to his arm, pulled down with him to the bench.  
  
“I was… the only… I…” He teetered dangerously on the edge of the bench; Poppy pushed him upright.  
  
Dean strode up then, as if he’d been awaiting his cue. He produced a paper bag with the bookstore’s name on it, held it up to Sam’s face, and held Sam’s shoulder with the other hand. “OK, Sammy, just breathe,” he said with forced patience.  
  
Sam clutched the bag and breathed rapidly, inflating and deflating it. Poppy frowned up at Dean uncertainly.  
  
Dean jerked his head at her belly. “The baby’s his?”  
  
Poppy flushed. “Yes,” she said, with a touch of defiance.  
  
Dean nodded. There was silence for a moment, broken only by the fluttering sound of the bag as Sam hyperventilated. “OK,” Dean said after a minute. “You should know a few things. Sam wasn’t himself when he met you. He’s better now, though, and he’s a good guy. So whatever happened between you two—”  
  
“Did I _ask_?” said Poppy abruptly. She stood up again, slowly and carefully this time. “No. I’m not _asking_ for anything. I just thought maybe he’d like to know. So now you know,” she said to Sam, who had abandoned the bag and looked up at her. “OK,” she said. “Third time’s the charm. Storming off now. I’d appreciate it if you’d give me a head start.” She turned away.  
  
Sam seemed to have regained some of his faculties. He stood up and moved carefully and gently toward her. “Wait. Poppy, please,” he said. “I… I am so sorry. I’ll never be able to explain in a way that… well… it’s no excuse, but I would never have done what I did if—”  
  
“Not exactly what a girl wants to hear,” she snapped. “What the hell _happened_ to you? Where’s all that… smoldering, effortless charm? You’re like a completely different person.”  
  
“You have no idea,” Sam said softly.  
  
“You really don’t,” Dean agreed.  
  
Poppy sighed. “Maybe I don’t want to. I’m… OK, all right? I’m gonna have a baby. Millions of other women do it; so can I. I don’t need any help from you. Just thought you might want to know you’re a father.” She shook her head and muttered, “If this is the first time.”  
  
Sam just stood, gaping at her. He had no clue what to do or say. He _wanted_ to be responsible. But he had no idea what was going to happen to him tomorrow, let alone next month—whether he would even survive, and if his sanity would. What if the wall broke down while he was holding the baby? Or what if Poppy and the baby came to rely on him, and then he died? Would having a shitty, unreliable father be better than having no father at all?  
  
 _I should know,_ he thought. “Poppy,” he said finally. “I’m sure you don’t need help. And honestly, I’m in no position to give it. But I will do whatever I can. Whatever level of involvement you want. If you—”  
  
“What do _you_ want?”  
  
Sam was brought up short. He stared down at her, frozen. What did _he_ want? It had never crossed his mind. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He closed it again.  
  
Poppy looked at him. All the bravado faded from her expression, and she was all the more beautiful for it. Sam could see what he’d seen in her, (though he usually avoided blondes, since Jess) but now she just looked sad, tired, and a little bit broken.  
  
“That’s what I thought,” she said quietly. “Listen… if you really don’t remember a whole year, you’ve got enough problems. Here,” she said, digging in her purse. She pulled out a business card and handed it to him. “I gathered from Dean that you’re just ‘passing through’ again. I’m due in four weeks. If you pass through again after that and you want to meet your daughter, call me.”  
  
She looked at him for a moment longer, then touched his face gently. Sam flinched, but didn’t pull away. “I knew I was playing with fire when I met you, Sam, and I made my choice. It’s not your fault.” She glanced at Dean. “Is this what he’s really like?”  
  
“Yep. This is the real Sam Winchester.”  
  
She nodded, withdrawing her hand from his face and gazing into Sam’s shell-shocked eyes. “I like you better this way,” she said softly, and walked away.  
  
~ * * * ~  
  
It was very quiet in the hotel room that night. In fact, Sam hadn’t said a word since they’d left the mall hours ago. Dean had given up, kicked his boots off, and settled back in bed, when Sam said, out of nowhere, “A _girl_.”  
  
Dean rolled over. “Yep. You all right?”  
  
Sam nodded wordlessly. He was staring numbly into space, as he had been all evening. He looked up at Dean for the first time since he’d learned he was about to be a father. “Dean… what am I gonna do?”  
  
“Been thinkin’ about that a lot. I had to think about it once before, you know. Not much you _can_ do, with the life we lead.” Sam just nodded miserably. “But what I figure is this. You do your job, like you always have. And what is our job, Sammy? Saving the world. Now it will just have one more thing in it that you want to save.”  
  
They were silent for a while. Then Sam asked, “Do you think… it’s better if Poppy doesn’t know anything about us? Or maybe it’d be better if we warn her, teach her some things. So she can protect herself and the baby.”  
  
“For that to work, she’d have to believe us.”  
  
“I wonder if I told her anything, or she saw anything last time, to help make her believe. I wish I could remember what happened.”  
  
“Well, you know one thing that happened.” Dean smirked. “Soulless-you had pretty good taste. Your baby mama is hot.”  
  
Sam clutched his belly and groaned. “Dean… don’t call her that!”  
  
Dean wasn’t listening. He’d gotten a distant look in his eye. “Hey… that means I’m an _uncle._ Uncle Dean… huh. Kinda has a ring to it.”  
  
Sam groaned again. “You’re gonna be the uncle that lets them watch the Spice channel when they’re teenagers and sneaks them their first beer.”  
  
“Hey, I wouldn’t do that with a little girl… probably. And what’s with the ‘them’? You thinkin’ you made lots of little Winchesters while you were soulless? Didn’t I teach you to always keep it wrapped?”  
  
“DEAN.” An edge of hysteria had crept into Sam’s voice.  
  
“Sorry. Thought we’d seen the worst of it when we had to visit the clinic a few weeks back.”  
  
Sam recalled the scene uncomfortably. It was only a day or two after Death had put up the Great Wall of Sam, as Dean liked to call it.  
  
He’d come out of the bathroom and eyed Dean uncertainly. Dean had sat up immediately from where he lounged on his bed in front of the TV. He was still _hovering._  
  
“You OK, Sam?”  
  
“Uh… fine. Well… I’m not sure. There’s this… burning sensation…”  
  
“Probably normal, right? I mean, your soul was in the cage with Lucifer; it’s bound to burn a little when it goes back in.”  
  
Sam shifted from foot to foot, rubbing his legs together. He gave a tremendous squirm, and Dean looked at him sharply. “No, uh… this is different, it’s—”  
  
“Sam! Don’t even _think_ about it. And I mean that literally. You heard what Death said. Don’t scratch the wall!”  
  
“No! DEAN. It’s a burning sensation… when I pee.”  
  
“Oh. _Oh._ ” Dean was silent for a minute, and Sam saw him hide a smirk, rubbing his face. “OK, well… we better hit the clinic then. There should be one in town. A little penicillin will fix you right up.” Dean gave up hiding his expression and half-smirked, half-frowned at Sam in exaggerated disapproval. “I thought soulless you was all rational! Condoms are rational, Sammy; didn’t I teach you _anything_?”  
  
“Oh, sure, Dean; then how come you knew exactly what I was talking about and what to do about it?”  
  
Sam sighed, brought back to the moment. Yeah. He’d thought _that_ was going to be the worst consequence of his soulless exploits, at least in that particular… area. He had been so careful, his entire life, to avoid these kinds of consequences that they had never even crossed his mind, even when looking at a pregnant woman and feeling he should know her. He wanted it to be possible that Poppy was lying, but he knew she wasn’t. He just knew, and Dean, who was more cynical about this kind of thing than just about anyone, seemed to know, too.  
  
“Dean,” he said abruptly. “What if she tells people about me? Wouldn’t that make her a target?”  
  
He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth; before he even looked over at Dean, he could feel the anxious, painful miasma envelop his brother. He closed his mouth firmly, but too late.  
  
“You mean like Lisa and Ben might be?” said Dean bitterly.  
  
Sam sighed. “I guess we’re kind of in the same boat.”  
  
“Yeah. Kinda.”  
  
They were silent for several minutes, then: “Sam.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Our lives suck.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
~ * * * ~  
  
By morning, Sam had made up his mind. He was going to see Poppy, and he had his story all planned out. Hopefully it would give her plenty of reasons not to tell anyone who he was, and to take measures to protect herself.  
  
Dean was going to follow some leads on their case and meet up with Sam afterwards. He dropped Sam off at the address they’d found (illegally) using the cell number Poppy had given Sam. As they drove up, Sam got that horrible, familiar feeling again. He’d seen it before: the not-quite-middle-class neighborhood, with its sprawling trees and aging suburban appeal, and the little, slightly run-down house. How much time had he spent with Poppy?  
  
After Dean wished him good luck and drove off, Sam went to the door, took a deep breath, and knocked. To his surprise, he was immediately answered by a sunny call of “Come in!”  
  
He opened the door and stepped inside hesitantly. “Uh… hello? Poppy?”  
  
“Right he—oh.” She came around the corner, wiping her hands on a dish towel, and stopped short at the sight of Sam. She looked startled, but Sam was encouraged when she didn’t immediately look like she was about to cry, or hit him. “What are you doing here?” she asked, somewhat coolly.  
  
“Um, sorry to barge in. Were you expecting someone?”  
  
“Yeah. Not you, though. Uh, come in, I guess.” She led the way to the kitchen, which was filled with delicious, sugary scents.  
  
Sam followed her in. She glanced at him over her shoulder as she walked to the stove, peeking into the oven. When he didn’t immediately speak, she said, “I’m a hopeless cook, normally. But since about the second month, I’ve craved nothing but cookies and bread and cupcakes—bread was about all I could eat for a while, too. So I figured I might as well learn to bake the stuff myself. Turned out it wasn’t so hard.”  
  
“It all smells great,” said Sam, awkwardly.  
  
She glanced at him, steely-eyed. “I’m sure you didn’t come here for baked goods, Sam.” She added, slightly under her breath, “That’s definitely not what you came here for the last time you were in town.”  
  
Sam felt himself redden. “Poppy, I wouldn’t—that’s not why—”  
  
“Big pregnant chicks not so hot, huh?” she snapped.  
  
Sam sighed. He looked at her for a moment, but she had turned her back to him, and was sliding a tray of cupcakes out of the oven. He said nothing until her shoulders sagged slightly, then, gently: “Poppy, is there any way I could say anything _right,_ here?”  
  
She sighed, and turned to face him. She gave a wry half-smile. “Not really.” She slumped, and turned toward the kitchen table. Sam automatically moved to pull out a chair for her.  
  
She glanced at him as she sat down, slowly balancing her belly as she did so. “Thanks,” she said, with a slightly confused frown. “Um. Have a seat, and a cupcake, if you want. And tell me why you’re here.”  
  
Sam had a list of things he needed to say; he’d prepared for this, but being around Poppy still made his head swim strangely from his not-memories, and in general, her reactions threw him off. So he discarded the script in his head, not really knowing what he would say until he opened his mouth.

“I’ve had some time to think now,” he said, sitting down. “But I am still in no way ready for this. A baby. That’s huge. You obviously know that. Poppy, I honestly never thought I would live long enough.”

She glanced at him, and her gaze had softened a little. She nodded.

“There was a time when I thought I had a chance for a normal life. But I had to give up that dream—and in the last few months, I’ve realized that more than ever. I will never have a normal life. And… no one close to me ever will, either.”

Poppy stared at the table, and nodded again. She opened her mouth to speak, but closed it again without saying anything. She looked up and met his eye briefly, encouraging him to continue.

“So… there are some things I have to tell you, Poppy. And they may seem hard to believe, but I’m telling you because I want to keep you and the baby safe. You might as well know now—it’s really dangerous to know me. You might be better off never seeing me again.”

“I know,” she said softly.

He looked at her. All the anger seemed leeched out of her, and there was a deep sadness there that Sam desperately wanted to understand. He thought over his rehearsed story—that he was in witness protection, that she couldn’t ever tell anyone about him and Dean because terrible people might harm her or the baby to get at him… and it wasn’t a bad lie, since it held so much of the truth. But looking at her, and thinking that the child she bore was actually part of him—was a _Winchester_ —it was so hard, harder than it ever was, to bring the lies to his lips.

“Poppy,” he said softly. “What did I tell you about myself when you met me?”

“You really… it’s really true that you can’t remember anything? I wouldn’t believe you, except—well, you do seem like a totally different person. But I would normally think you were full of shit. Because my mom was a doctor, Sam. A neurologist. I know more about how this stuff works than most people do. Amnesia doesn’t just happen all the time, like in the soap operas.”

“I know. But yes, it’s true, and no, I’m not anything like I was when you met me.”

“What caused the amnesia?”

Sam sighed. Here he was, having hoped he could avoid lying, pressed up against the one thing she would never believe. _Well, you see Poppy, my brother and I were vessels for Lucifer and the archangel Michael; they wanted to use us to start the apocalypse, but I tricked Lucifer and went to Hell, but somehow I got brought back, only without my soul, but my brother made a deal with Death to get it back, so now I can’t remember anything that happened while it was gone!_

“It’s… a really long story,” he said. “Poppy… you’d never believe the truth. I just… I really don’t want to lie to you. I had this story all planned out, but… I just don’t want to tell it. I don’t want lies to be the only thing I pass on to my child.”

She looked at him for a long moment. “OK,” she said. “I’m not crazy about lies, either. But when I met you, I don’t think that’s the line you took.”

“Probably not,” Sam acknowledged.

“So, let’s make a deal. I won’t push you on anything you say you can’t tell me, if you tell me whether what you said to me the first time we met was true or not.”

“I may not remember, but I’ll do my best.”

“Also, _don’t_ ever lie to me. I’ll just let it go if you say you can’t tell me.”

“Deal.”

“You said you were an FBI agent, investigating a murder in our town. True or not?”

“Not. Well, I probably was investigating a murder, but I’m not an FBI agent.”

“Why would you be investigating a murder if you’re not an FBI agent, and why would you pose as one?”

Sam sighed. Already something he couldn’t tell her. “Well… I can’t give you details, but Dean and I investigate certain things, and there must have been one of those kinds of things in this town.”

“That’s informative,” she muttered, but she said nothing more. She was thinking hard; Sam could see her calculating a lot of different things at once. She was a smart one, clearly. He would have to be careful. “If you and Dean do this together, why wasn’t he with you then?”

“He didn’t know I was alive.” Sam was surprised that this was what came out; he didn’t _have_ to tell her that. “Since he believed I was gone, he had a chance for that normal life I mentioned… I wanted him to have that.”

“Why did he think you were dead? What happened? Is it the same thing that caused your amnesia?” 

Again, Sam was impressed at her quickness. “Yep. Same thing.” He could see her suppress the desire to ask more about this, knowing he couldn’t tell her, trying to figure out what she _could_ ask to get the information she wanted. She’d make a good investigator. Probably time to get her off that track.

“Did I… tell you anything else about myself?” Sam really wanted to know what he’d been like with her, how they had come to sleep together… if he had treated her well.

“Not really. You were even more close-mouthed than now. But you did tell me you had a brother—or rather, your dad did.”

Sam felt the blood drain from his face. “My… my dad? You met my dad?”

“Yeah. Whoa. Umm, some ugly family history there?”

“My dad is dead. You can’t have met him.”

“No? Well, you said he was your father. He was an FBI agent, too—or I guess posing as one. Bald guy, kind of handsome, in his fifties?”

“Oh.” Sam breathed a sigh of relief. Of course, if he and Samuel had decided to tell people they were related for some reason, Samuel couldn’t pass as his grandfather; he wasn’t the right age. “Did he call himself Samuel?”  
“Yeah, said it was a family name.”

“Yeah. It is.” Sam didn’t know why he’d said it, but Poppy, eyeing him, didn’t ask.

“You didn’t say much else, but you were… interested in me,” said Poppy. “I think that’s why you came in for a massage.”

Sam gasped. A surge of memory hit him, a sensuous moment, lying on a table, shirtless, with small but strong hands on him… He remembered the card Poppy had given him this time around—he’d barely noticed what sort of business it was for, but yes, she was a massage therapist.

Sam held his head for a moment. Poppy just looked at him. “You OK?” she finally asked, carefully.

“Yeah. Umm… sometimes something triggers a memory, and it can be kind of… intense.”

“Makes sense. Intense was sort of your middle name, when I met you. What did you remember?”  
Sam flushed a bit. “Getting a massage from you.”

To his surprise, Poppy smiled. “Well, I wanted it to be memorable. Once I’d made the decision to break my ironclad rule never to sleep with a client, anyway. A female massage therapist has to make sure people know the difference between what we do and, you know, _massage parlors._ ” She eyed him. “You were… this weird combination of really respectful and really persuasive. After I let you talk me into giving you the massage at my house instead of at my office, I knew it was all over.”

“So I’ve been here.” Sam knew he had. He looked around himself, the familiarity, mixed with that lost feeling, washing over him. It almost _itched_ inside him. Now he understood what Death meant, about not scratching the wall.

“Several times,” said Poppy. “And, umm…” She took a deep breath. “We did use condoms. But one time, it broke.”

“I see.” Sam cleared his throat. “Poppy,” he said seriously. “I didn’t... make you any promises, did I?”

She laughed. “Not at all. That was something else I wanted to ask whether it was true or not. You said you wouldn’t be in town long, and that you liked me, but that you couldn’t afford any attachments, and it was better if I didn’t either, because you lived a really dangerous life.”

He sighed. “Actually, that’s all a hundred percent true.”

“I figured.”

They were silent for a while as Poppy got up to pour more batter into muffin tins. She looked at Sam as she wiped off her hands. “All right, enough already,” she said, and Sam looked up, startled. “Muffin or cupcake?” She gestured at the counter, which was full of cooling racks of both kinds of pastry. 

Sam smiled. “Uh, I’ll go with muffin. Thanks.”

She set a muffin on a little plate and set it in front of him. “Good choice. Blueberry, my favorite. Coffee?” She took the carafe from the coffee maker and poured some for herself.

“Sure.” Sam looked around at all the pastries and the gleaming-clean kitchen. There were coffee cups on the table, laid out as if for a guest, along with some bakery boxes, still folded, and one assembled one, full of cupcakes. He took a bite of his muffin and paused, chewing. Pastries weren’t really his thing, but it was delicious. Dean would probably be in heaven right now. “This is great,” he said. “Do you sell your baked goods?”

“Yep. It wasn’t my idea, really. I have this good friend who encouraged me to do it; he’s my main customer, and he’s pretty much built my customer base for me with recommendations. He’s helped me a lot since I told him I was pregnant. That’s how we met, in fact.”

“Really?” Sam sat up straight. His intuition prickled strangely. He had no idea why a friend who wanted Poppy to sell her muffins would give him this feeling of foreboding, but he’d long since learned to pay attention to such signals. “What happened?” he asked.

“Well, I was having a really bad day. My car was in the shop, so I had to take the bus to this massage gig I had, giving chair massages—at the mall where I saw you and Dean today, actually. It was the last massage I gave. I was having a hard time being on my feet so much, and my bump was getting big enough to be in the way. I was giving a massage to some asshole, and nothing was good enough for him—he kept complaining, so I was shifting, trying to get a better angle, and I bumped him with my belly. He just went off on me, asking if I’d gotten knocked up by a client, and could he expect that kind of service, and what made me think getting a massage from a pregnant chick would be sexy… normally I’d tell him off good, but it was just too much. I started crying, and the other therapist I was working with was just staring, not knowing what to do, and then Mark showed up! He grabbed that asshole and yanked him away from me, and man, did he cut him down to size! I’ve never heard such great insults. I wished I’d written them down.

“But while this was happening, I got really light-headed and had to sit down. I was overwhelmed, and I realized I couldn’t work anymore while I’m pregnant, and I don’t have any other income, so I had no idea what I was going to do. Since I have my own business, it’s not like I can get paid while I’m on maternity leave or anything. My parents are dead, and I don’t have any other close family, and… well, I didn’t think I could find you. I knew I was on my own.

“So I couldn’t stop crying, once I’d started, and Mark came over and talked to me. He was really sympathetic. We talked a lot, and he said he had some contacts and could probably find me some easy work to do to while I was pregnant. He was so friendly, and I’m relatively new to town, so it was just really nice that someone was willing to talk to me. You’d be surprised how much prejudice there still is toward unmarried pregnant women, at least in this part of the country. People, especially women, look at me like they’re going to somehow catch it.

“I’d never have wanted to move back to the South, but I inherited my grandmother’s house, this house, when she died. Not having to pay rent makes a big difference, so I decided to get a fresh start with my massage business… anyway.

“Mark’s about as different from Southern folks as you can get; he’s English. So we got to be friends. He drove me home that day, and I invited him in for a cupcake. That’s when he got the idea for me to go into business selling them. He even got me started—he bought me the second oven,” She gestured to it; Sam had noticed that one of the ovens was larger and newer than the other regular one under a stovetop, “and got me some materials, all for just a small share of my profits. And free cupcakes, of course.” She smiled proudly, patting the box of cupcakes on the table. “He really loves them. I think he’s doing it just to be kind; he’ll probably never get his money back. He’s always bringing me a new tin or cooling racks or decorating tools. I’m going to try cakes next. You can charge a lot for decorated cakes. But listen to me, babbling…”

She stopped, and looked at Sam quizzically. Sam was gripping the edge of the table, his eyes wide. “You say this Mark is English?” he said sharply. “What does he look like?”

Poppy eyed him. She smiled uncertainly, with a bit of a coy, pleased edge. “Handsome,” she said, watching his face. “I mean, that accent is kind of hot. And he’s really well-dressed. Nice face. He’s pretty short, but, being on the rebound from a really tall guy, that seemed kind of nice.” She cocked her head at Sam. His reaction didn’t seem to be what she was expecting. “Why? You can’t _really_ be jealous, can you? Anyway, he’s a great guy, and he doesn’t mind about the baby, so I might have thought about it, but I think he’s gay.”

“Poppy,” Sam said, trying to swallow the dangerous edge he could hear in his own voice, “this could turn out to be important. What did you tell Mark about me?”

“Well… kind of everything,” said Poppy nervously. “Once we got to be friends, I told him the whole story, and asked if he had any ideas how I might find you. He said I was better off not looking.” She glanced at him edgily. “If you’re interested, you could probably meet him. He said he’d come over sometime today. That’s who I thought it was, when you came to the door.”

Sam stood up so abruptly that Poppy flinched. “I have to call Dean,” he said, but just then, there was a knock on the front door and it opened.

“Poppy, love, you in?” a horribly familiar voice called from the front hall.

~* * *~

Dean put a little extra stank on his usual bat-out-of-hell driving, trying to get back to Sam as soon as possible. Sam was gonna flip when he found out there were demons in the mall—they had some kind of operation going on in the basement—but he was gonna freak even more when he found out Crowley was with them, and in charge of the operation, and that the operation involved more kinds of nasty than they had ever seen together in one place before. This was big, and Dean felt that he needed not just his brother to tackle it, but preferably a whole freakin’ army of hunters.

He’d called Bobby, who had agreed to call around for backup in the area before heading south himself. Dean wasn’t sure he’d get there in time to help them. He’d even thought about praying for Castiel, but something weird was going on with him, and though Dean wouldn’t admit it to Sam or Bobby, he wasn’t sure he trusted him.  
He pulled into Poppy’s neighborhood and slowed down as he focused on the car ahead of him. Something about it made him suspicious—namely that it was far too expensive a car for this neighborhood; a sleek, black luxury sedan—but it felt unpleasantly familiar, too. He slowed down and followed the car, about a block behind, and his heart plummeted when he saw it pull up in front of Poppy’s house. Damn it! Sam didn’t even have any weapons with him except maybe a pistol, and hell of a lot of good that would do if this was who Dean thought it was… and as he saw the short, stocky figure walk up to the front door, his worst fears were confirmed.

No sense trying to be subtle now. Dean parked and jumped out of the car, but Crowley had already disappeared into Poppy’s house.

~* * *~

“In the kitchen, Mark!” Poppy called, before Sam could stop her. “What?” she said to Sam then, and squeaked as Sam leaped around the table, grabbed her by the shoulders and thrust her behind him. He stood with his arms spread out in front of her as she spluttered in protest, and then Crowley walked into the kitchen.

“Oh. Hello, Moose,” he said mildly.

“So you’re Mark, now?” said Sam hostilely.

“I favor apostle names. They make me sound… trustworthy.”

Sam drew his gun and leveled it at Crowley. “You stay away from her,” he said levelly.

“Oh my God! Put that away, Sam!” Poppy seized Sam’s arm, but he kept his aim steady and ignored her. 

“What the hell are you doing here, Crowley?”

“I’ve come for my cupcakes. Oh, and my baby, of course. You?”

“ _Your_ baby? What are you talking about, Mark? You know Sam?” Poppy was straining forward, but Sam spread his arms to keep her back. “Mark, tell him… tell him you’re not who he thinks you are!”

“Hello, Poppy, dear. Would give you your usual hug, but there seems to be a giant wall of denim between us. And I’m afraid I’m exactly who Sam thinks I am. I was about to make all your problems disappear. Of course, I’d be making you disappear soon afterward—can’t leave things messy—but, semantics. Now, Sam. Why don’t you have a seat and we can negotiate this?”

“I’ll kill you first.”

“You’ll try, and it won’t be your first ignominious failure, will it?”

“He’ll have help,” said a voice from the doorway. Dean had appeared, leveling a shotgun at Crowley, and holding a vial of holy water in his other hand.

“And such competent help you’ve turned out to be. Well, boys. It’s been a smashing little reunion, but I’ll be taking my lovely little incubator and going now. Poppy, love, come along.”

Sam spared a glance back at Poppy, whose breathing had become percussive behind him. There were tears on her face, and a look of confused betrayal. God, he’d give anything to spare her this—to prevent her _ever_ having to discover that someone she’d trusted, even someone she’d cared about, was a monster. Especially if that monster was himself.

“What’s going on?” she whispered.

“Poppy, listen to me. There’s no time to explain. Crowley wants your baby, I assume because it’s mine, and he’ll kill you to get it. He is evil, Poppy—a monster. We’ve got to get you—”

“Don’t appreciate the name-calling, Jolly Green,” said Crowley. “Besides, who are you to talk? I plan to give this baby a bright, bright future. You had your fun, leaving your soul in a bin somewhere while you were at it, and ran off, without any pesky attachments or even any memories to bother with. Where were you when dear Poppy needed a ride to her doctor’s appointment, and someone to pay her bills, so she could rest while growing me a bouncing baby demon?”

_“No,”_ Poppy moaned. She was obviously having a hard time assimilating her new reality. “No,” she repeated.

“Oh, and by the way,” Crowley pointed at Sam, then at her belly as he spoke. “Demon blood—demon child. I’m guessing he didn’t share that little tidbit? Or the whole soulless bit, either, I’d wager.”

“Sam…” whispered Poppy, horrified.

“I didn’t know… the demon blood. The baby will have it?”

“Has, compadre, has. She’s going to be a very promising little hybrid. Always wanted a chip off the old block. She should manifest some quite interesting powers, if I raise her up right. And I will. It’s just like I promised you, Poppy. The best schools, the very best hellhound companions—” He stopped speaking and shouted in pain.

“SAM! Get her outta here!” Dean shouted. He had thrown the vial of holy water in Crowley’s face and now cocked his shotgun. He fired as Poppy screamed, and Sam swept her up in his arms and ran for the door.

Sam was shoving a hysterical Poppy, as carefully as he could, in the back of the Impala when Dean leaped into the driver’s seat. “Go!” shouted Sam, pulling his legs hastily inside and tumbling to the floor in the back seat as Dean took off. 

The roar of the Impala’s engine was deafening. Sam was sprawled at the feet of Poppy, who was shivering and sobbing, and Dean was swearing and driving recklessly, brakes squealing. Now, _this_ Sam could deal with. This was exactly where he was used to being.

He crawled up onto the seat and belted Poppy in; she, still sobbing, didn’t resist. 

“Sam,” she choked finally. “Is it… is it true? Are you a _demon_?”

“No,” he said calmly, at the same time as Dean shouted it. He shot Dean a warning look in the rearview mirror. “No, Poppy. I’m human. But... what Crowley said, it wasn’t a lie. I didn’t think of it. I thought it was all over—”

“Crowley could be lying,” Dean interrupted.

“But then why would he want the baby?” said Sam. “There must be some truth to it. Or maybe he wants it because it would be an angelic vessel, like us. Regardless, it’ll be dangerous for her now that—”

“What are you TALKING about?” Poppy shrieked suddenly, so loudly it hurt Sam’s ears. “Angelic—demons—you guys can’t be both—you can’t be _either_! Are you on drugs? Is this some mass hallucination? How did you get at Mark? He…” She stopped. Her expression crumpled. Sam knew she was remembering what Crowley had said, the cold way he’d treated her, all the things she couldn’t rationalize. “He was… I thought I was lucky to have such a good friend. My only real friend. But he isn’t who he said he was.” She glanced at Sam, and her face fell further. She said nothing more.

“Well, now you have two more,” said Dean unexpectedly. “So you trade in one fake for two of the genuine article. You traded up.”

Poppy eyed him suspiciously. Dean’s assertion fell flat, but Sam, at least, was still glad he’d said it. “Poppy,” said Sam. “There is one good thing to come out of all this. Now I can tell you the truth.”

“Did… did what happened to you happen to Mark, too? Is that why he seems like a different person now? Is it the same thing?” She sounded desperate, like even this scenario would be better than the truth she suspected.

“No. I’m sorry. Crowley was acting. He knew, long before you met him probably, that you were carrying my baby. He would only do the things he did for you to get what he wanted. He’s… not the kind person you thought he was, Poppy. He isn’t a person at all. He’s a demon. Probably the worst of them all.”

“Hey—you didn’t sign anything, did you?” said Dean abruptly. “Or agree to anything? Hey, did you _kiss_ him?”

 

Sam frowned at Dean in the rearview as Poppy said, “God, intrusive much?” There was a silence, then: “No, I never kissed him. Is that important?”

“It is, actually,” said Sam. “That’s good. And… your agreement to give him a share of your bakery profits? Did you sign anything?”

“No, actually. He always said he liked to keep things informal.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” said Sam.

“And a giant lie,” said Dean. “But yeah, way better than the alternative.”

“So,” said Poppy abruptly. “Demons are real. Like, from hell demons? The kind that eats babies and…” She stopped, and Sam was alarmed when she turned paper white and swayed in her seat a little. She clutched her belly.  
  
She had seemed to recover a bit as they were talking. Sam had not touched her to comfort her when she wept, afraid that he did not have the right and she would reject him. But he hugged her tightly now, and she leaned in and clung to him, gulping back sobs. It felt strange to touch her—always on the edge of memory, and it frightened him to think of the life inside her that had come from him. Sam’s long arms served him well, allowing him to reach around and envelop her, belly and all, and as she pressed against him, her belly against his side, he felt a sense of relief: the baby was cradled safely between them, fully protected.  
  
Poppy seemed comforted, too. Her breathing eventually slowed. She shifted slightly, leaning her upper body closer to Sam’s, and Sam jolted suddenly and gasped. He had felt movement against his side, almost like a jab in his ribs! He sat back in alarm, pressing his hand to her belly, but she laughed.  
  
“Is that… normal?” Sam asked, flinching slightly at the continued movement under his hand.  
  
“Yep. She’s a little gymnast,” said Poppy fondly. “She moves a lot if I do—or if I’m upset. She can sense when a lot is going on, and she reacts. See?” she said, moving Sam’s hand and pressing it firmly to her. Sam felt a stronger movement. “That’s her knee, I’m pretty sure. Not so bad now that I’m used to it, but not fun when it wakes you up in the middle of the night, especially when it’s almost impossible to sleep anyway.”  
  
Sam said nothing, looking down at his hand on her. He was flooded with guilt and fear. He had left Poppy to suffer, to deal with all the pains of pregnancy and the ordinary fears about parenting, alone, and that was not even considering all the terrifying ramifications of carrying _his_ baby. He had so many questions, including those that Poppy would surely ask that he could not answer. What was she carrying inside her? Aside from the demon blood question, Sam was horribly troubled that the baby had been conceived without the benefit of his soul. What created a soul? Did it require the souls of both parents? Would the demon blood passed on to her make it so she could not grow up… fully human? Sam had once believed he was destined to become evil because of it, and he hadn’t. He’d fought it off, for the sake of his brother and the world. But could a child, a _baby,_ understand such motivation?  
  
Sam knew of only one being to whom he had access who might be able to answer these questions, and he desperately needed to talk to him now. But he was unsure of where things stood with Castiel, and whether he could trust him. He knew that Dean had doubts, too, though he would not admit to them. Regardless, they needed answers, as well as a way to keep Poppy and the baby safe, and there was really nowhere else they could turn.  
  
Poppy sat, silently and very still, as Sam sat frozen with his unborn child moving beneath his hand. She watched his face intently, and at length she spoke.  
  
“Sam,” she said gently. “You don’t really know any more than I do about what’s going to happen, do you?”  
  
“I guess not,” Sam said, his voice choked by a sudden lump in his throat.  
  
To his surprise, Poppy touched his face tenderly. “She’s not evil,” she said softly. Sam blinked at her in surprise. “And she has a soul, if that’s what you’re worried about.”  
  
Sam stared at her. “How do you know?” he asked.  
  
“Well, I’m growing her inside me, so how could I not know?” Poppy sighed, looking into Sam’s doubtful eyes. “Listen… she’s already really different from what you were like without your soul. Weirdly, Sam… nothing, no story about amnesia that you could have made up, makes as much sense to me as knowing you didn’t have a soul when we were together.”  
  
Sam wasn’t sure she could say anything that would surprise him more. “What? Why?”  
  
“I guess I could feel it, once I got past my denial,” she said. “It’s so ironic. Do you know what my nickname was for you, when I got really upset that you were clearly making it impossible to find you? ‘The Soulless Monster’. With Mark, and this other coworker I confided in. She would ask me, ‘Any luck finding the Soulless Monster?’”  
  
“Poppy,” Sam choked, unable to hold back his remorse any longer, “I’m so sorry…”  
  
“I don’t want that, Sam. I want to understand—you’re gonna have to tell me the whole story, and no pussyfooting around it—but even before I knew everything, after you came back this time, I couldn’t be mad at you anymore. And even back then, what I felt was more than… anger at being knocked up and abandoned. I knew there was something going on. I just had no experience, no possible explanation to back me up.” She smiled at him. “It’s not really the first time the world didn’t turn out to be what I thought it was. It’s just a little more… extreme, this time.”  
  
Sam nodded. “So… how did you know I was soulless? How does it make sense to you now?”  
  
“Little things. I mean, as a massage therapist, I have to connect to people in order to do my job well. When I met you, you flirted with me and showed a lot of blatant interest in me, and I was really attracted to you, but there was always something strange about it. When I gave you your massage, I felt… weird, almost scared. You were warm, but it was like touching dead flesh. You reacted sensuously, but… I don’t know how to describe it. It was like there was no one there. I noticed then, a bunch of times after that, something really strange. If we stopped talking and I wasn’t looking at you—well, sometimes I could forget there was someone in the room with me. The house _felt_ empty, you know? I mean, you never spent the night, but once or twice I fell asleep while you were there, and you didn’t leave. And I swear, I would wake up, you would be right there in bed with me, and I was so surprised when I stretched out and touched you, because it felt like I was completely alone.  
  
“I knew you weren’t in love with me—I mean,” she laughed, a little bitterly, “Not even a little bit. There was no warmth, no connection like I wanted. You were… really cold, so I didn’t get why I couldn’t say no to you. Except that… it felt like there was something in you I just kept reaching for, that I couldn’t quite touch. I think it was… this. The real you.”  
  
Sam just looked at her. He couldn’t think of a word to say. Her intuitive understanding floored him. How could she understand so much that even _he_ had never understood?  
  
“Anyway,” Poppy continued, “it’s the opposite with the baby. One night, a few weeks after you left, I just… woke up, and felt like there was someone in the house with me. I looked everywhere, freaking out, and I couldn’t sleep that night, afraid that there was a burglar in the house that I just couldn’t find or something. But as I lay awake, I put the signs together—all the usual stuff. I’d missed my period, and I’d been feeling really tired and a little sick. By morning, I knew I was pregnant. The pregnancy test confirmed it. So… I think that feeling, like there’s someone with you, how you know someone’s looking at you, even if you didn’t know anyone was there? I think that comes from the soul. And my baby definitely has one.”  
  
There was silence for a moment. Dean cleared his throat from the front seat. “Um, sorry to interrupt,” he said gruffly, “but we need a plan. I put a devil’s trap on Poppy’s front door on the way in, to slow Crowley down. Slashed his tires, too, but that was more for the fun of it.” He grinned at them in the rearview. “My baby’s got sigils all over—” He paused to pat the dashboard. “—that should keep us hidden for a while. But you know we’re not safe, Sam.”  
  
“Yeah, I know. Is there any place nearby we could go? One of Rufus’s, maybe?”  
  
“Rufus didn’t really hang in this part of the country. I’ll call Bobby, see if he knows of any good safe spots.”  
  
“We could head for Atlanta,” said Poppy. “It’s not too far, and it’s pretty easy to hide in a big city, isn’t it?”  
  
Dean glanced at Sam, who shrugged. “Crowley knows us,” he said. “He knows we’d head for something off the map. Hiding in the city might throw him off.”  
  
“And I know my way around there. I lived there for a while, about ten years ago. So I could help us find something hidden.”  
  
Dean nodded, and put the accelerator to the floor. The Impala surged forward. “Sounds like a plan,” he said.  
  
“So, we’ve got a bit of a drive,” Poppy said. “I think it’s time you told me everything.”  
  
So Sam did.  
  
~* * *~  
  
Poppy found them a dilapidated, colonial-style hotel, full of dusty Old South grandeur, where they holed up and drew every form of protection either of them knew. Dean had prayed for Castiel, but he hadn’t made an appearance yet. Poppy took the Winchesters’ story in stride, far more easily than Sam would have expected.  
  
“Well, I’m the child of two doctors, so imagination was not something my mom was prepared to deal with,” she said cheerfully, when Sam pointed this out. “My dad died when I was a baby, and my mom was all about logic and science. I learned a lot about it, but instead of making me like my parents, it always made me curious about what else there was. I’m pretty sure I saw a ghost at a slumber party when I was thirteen, and I’ve always had good intuition. So maybe I’m a psychic,” she said casually. Sam looked at her wonderingly, and she laughed. “Anyway… it sucks that you guys have had a rough time, but I’m sort of relieved, you know? Now I don’t have to try to make everything fit into that limited worldview I was raised with. I always knew there was something more.”  
  
She displayed a rabid curiosity about all things supernatural. Sam spent hours answering her questions, and Dean displayed an unexpected willingness to “show her the ropes,” as he called it. She loved drawing sigils and Devil’s Traps, could load a shotgun with rock salt shells with easy proficiency, and her aim was good from the beginning. They couldn’t exactly do target practice in the hotel room, so Dean snuck her into a shooting range in the middle of the night, equipped her with a silencer he’d made himself, and let her have at it.

 

She was a natural, Sam thought uneasily. The whole thing made him uncomfortable. It was good that Poppy was developing these skills, but he never wanted her to need them.  
  
Dean had really taken to Poppy. He was fascinated by her “pregnant-lady cravings,” as he called them, especially since they so often involved pastry, and he had sort of designated himself as the provider for these cravings. They had great fun figuring out exactly what combination of foods she needed, then Dean rose to the challenge of finding them at all hours of the day or night.  
  
Bobby had gathered some other hunters to investigate what Dean had found out at the mall in Poppy’s town. They had found signs of demon activity and other ugly things in the basement of the mall—cages, torture devices, chains; all of it stained here and there with blood—but it was abandoned. There was no sign of Crowley anywhere, which did not reassure them. They knew he was coming.  
  
Poppy seemed reluctant to talk about only one thing—her baby, and her pregnancy. Sam was worried. Her due date was approaching, and though she was adamant about not letting it slow her down, it was very clear that she was uncomfortable. She tried to hide the fact that she couldn’t easily get up from a seated position; Dean or Sam tried to always be nearby to pull her to her feet.  
  
Her only concession to her condition, other than her cravings, was that she allowed Sam, after he tentatively offered, to rub her back and feet at regular intervals. He had heard that pregnant women liked this, and he could tell by the way she held her own hips as she walked that her back hurt. She instructed him on massage technique with good humor, but she always changed the subject when Sam tried to talk to her about what would happen after the baby was born.  
  
He and Dean talked about it one day while she was in the shower. “We’ve gotta find a safe place for her,” said Sam. “Maybe get a few of Bobby’s hunter friends in on the action. Someone near wherever she decides to stay.”  
  
“That’s a good idea,” Dean agreed. “Maybe…” He hesitated. “Maybe in Lisa’s town. We could get some hunters on rotation to look in on both of them now and then.”  
  
“Well… maybe not,” said Sam hesitantly. “If Crowley finds out where one of them is, then it would endanger them both.”  
  
Dean sighed. “Guess you’re right.”  
  
“I wish she’d tell me where she might like to go, then we could plan a little better.”  
  
“Yep. She’s gonna have to decide sooner or later.”  
  
“I think the problem is… she’s happy now. With us here. If she could—if she didn’t have to worry about the baby—I think she’d ask to come with us.”  
  
Dean shook his head sadly. “I didn’t mean to give her the hunter bug, bro. Sorry.”  
  
“Not your fault. I’m pretty sure it would have happened anyway.” Sam sighed. “And she doesn’t have any less right to pursue it than we do, baby or not. I mean, Dad had two kids.”  
  
“But I know you don’t want your daughter raised in that life, Sam, and I guess Poppy wouldn’t either, hunter bug or not. You know you can’t stay and raise the baby. We both gave up that whole normal life idea, I’m pretty sure.”  
  
“Well, not… not with those memories of the cage about to break through anytime. I don’t know how much time I even have, Dean.”  
  
“Neither of us does. We never will. That’s just our lives.”  
  
“Dean?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Our lives suck.”  
  
Dean smiled bitterly. “Yeah.”

 

~* * *~  
  
The next day, Poppy finally admitted to being tired, and stayed in bed all morning. Sam and Dean got a tip from Bobby about possible demon activity in the area. After warning Poppy that they might have to flee town soon, they went to do a little reconnaissance.  
  
They followed a bunch of leads that all turned out to be dead ends. They headed back to the hotel, empty-handed, but at least reassured that they were safe for a little while longer. Sam was determined to find a place to get Poppy settled. She would just have to talk to him about it—he wouldn’t let her out of it this time.  
  
“Hey, y’all,” drawled a voice as they came into the lobby of their hotel. “Mr. and, uh… Mr. Paige?” That damn hotel clerk. They had actually posed as brothers for once, taking the same false last name, but the clerk had been smirky about them from the beginning. Dean turned to tell him off, but Sam stopped him with a hand on his arm.  
  
“Yeah?” said Sam.  
  
“You’ve had visitors. They left a message with me.” He held up an envelope, and Sam moved forward to take it… then saw the clerks eyes flash black.  
  
“DEAN!” he shouted, drawing the demon-killing knife, but Dean got there before him, drawing his pistol and shooting the clerk in the chest. It wasn’t rock salt, so it barely slowed him down, and soon the lobby was full of demons, surrounding them.  
  
“We don’t want trouble,” said the clerk in his unctuous drawl. “All we want is the pregnant girl. Crowley doesn’t even want us to kill you—not that we’re unwilling, of course. But you can get out of this real easy if you just hand her over.”  
  
Sam brandished the knife uncertainly. If all they wanted was Poppy, why didn’t they have her already? It should have been child’s play for the demons to break into their room and take her. If they already knew where she was, the demon-repelling sigils wouldn’t do any good, and the Devil’s Trap in the room wouldn’t help unless one of them stepped into it. But this head demon acted like they didn’t know where she was.  
  
“Not a chance,” Dean was saying. He shot another demon that was edging closer to him.  
  
Sam decided it was time to fight. He leaped forward, grabbed the clerk by the shirtfront, and stabbed him with the knife. The others surged forward. Sam moved until he was back-to-back with Dean. They were badly outnumbered, but they’d faced worse odds before. He just hoped that Poppy had seen the demons coming and fled. It was her best chance.  
  
It was looking pretty bad, until a mysterious missile hit the demon Dean was fighting right in the face. The demon screamed and writhed, smoke rising from it. Sam heard a muted pop, and the demon that was about to attack him reacted the same way. He quickly dispatched it, ran to the other wounded one as Dean attacked a third, and dispatched that one, too. He ducked when he heard a shotgun blast and a third demon went down. He looked quickly toward where it had come from, and thought he caught a wisp of blonde hair retreating through the railing of the balcony.  
  
The demons seemed to think these attacks were some sort of secret weapon the Winchesters were unleashing on them. The ones that were left looked around, worried, and backed away from Sam and Dean, banding together. But then another one screamed and clutched his smoking face. Dean leaped back into the fray, now armed with a machete he had taken from one of his attackers, and Sam dispatched the smoking demon. As he did so, shoving it to the floor after he stabbed it, he noticed something odd—the demon was dripping wet, and on the floor next to it was a strange, brightly colored fragment of something—plastic? No, rubber, tied in a little knot—it was a balloon! Poppy was attacking the demons with balloons filled with holy water!  
  
Another balloon hit the demon nearest Sam. He killed it, then leapt to help Dean, who was struggling with two demons. He pulled one off his brother, fought with it briefly, and killed it, too. There were two more shotgun blasts; Sam quickly dispatched the wounded demons. Then there was another splash of water on the one Dean was struggling with, and Sam heard Dean laugh as he beheaded it: he had figured out the secret of the water balloons.  
  
Then suddenly, it was over. Sam ran around the lobby, making sure there were no hidden demons or any that had escaped. Dean was peering up at the balcony, then a small voice said, “Is that all of them? Are… are you guys OK?”  
  
Sam looked up. Poppy was at the top of the wide, grandiose staircase, shotgun in one hand, duffel bag slung over the other shoulder, belly huge in front of her. Sam had just finished a terrifying fight for his life, but _now_ he was helpless: with disbelief, admiration, fear, and God knows what else. He couldn’t move or speak, looking at this odd, avenging angel.  
  
Dean didn’t have the same problem. “Poppy?” He hurried up the stairs to her. Sam followed numbly. “You all right? Jesus, that’s what I call good timing. How did you do that?”  
  
“One of those sigils started glowing—I didn’t know it was supposed to do that. So I looked out the window and saw all these guys coming into the hotel. I don’t know, I just _knew_ they were demons. So I grabbed the duffle with the shotgun and shells and went down the back stairs—the ones the cleaning people use.”  
  
“Why didn’t you leave, then? Poppy, you should’ve run for it,” said Sam.  
  
“Where would I go? I figured you guys would come back, and then you’d be in trouble. I left my cell in the room, so I didn’t have your number, or I would have called to warn you. I guess I should memorize it,” she said, shame-facedly. Sam huffed in disbelief. She was upset, after all she’d done, with forgetting _that?_  
  
“Anyway,” she continued, “I had the gun and shells, but didn’t think that would be enough. I thought of this before and was gonna ask you guys about it, but I thought Dean might make fun of me. Anyway… there’s a big Catholic church a couple of blocks from here. I went to a baptism there once. So I ran into a drugstore, bought the balloons, and went and filled them all up from the baptismal font. The priest gave me a weird look, but it worked!”  
  
“Hell yeah, it did! Thanks!” said Dean, high-fiving her. “Dude,” he said, turning to Sam. “We just got rescued by a pregnant chick with _water balloons.”_  
  
“You won’t hear me complaining,” said Sam. “C’mon. We’d better get out of town as fast as we can.”  
  
Sam took the gun and duffle from Poppy and held her arm on the way back to the room. She didn’t seem to need it, but she didn’t protest. They packed quickly and got in the Impala, and Dean burned rubber out of town.  
  
They headed north, to the closest hunter’s cabin that Bobby had told them about. It had belonged to a friend of their dad’s who was now dead. They’d planned it as their next stop, anyway. Poppy excitedly hashed over the details of the battle, asking for tips on what she could have done better.  
  
“I don’t see how you could’ve done much better, really,” said Dean. “Water balloons! I’m usin’ that from now on.”  
  
“I’ll buy you a Super Soaker for Christmas and you can try that,” said Poppy.  
  
Sam was quiet through all this conversation. He was as anxious as he had ever been. They were no closer to finding a long-term solution for Poppy, and now Crowley knew where they were. They couldn’t run forever. The dread that closed over Sam when he thought of Poppy being attacked, or their baby being taken or harmed, was greater than any fear Sam had ever felt for his own life. It was perhaps the greatest terror he had ever known. He sat frozen in it for a long while, until Dean announced that they were nearing the cabin.  
  
“Maybe ten minutes or so, we’ll be there,” said Dean. “You doin’ OK back there, Poppy?”  
  
She had been quiet for some time, and when her answer was delayed now, Sam looked back at her anxiously. She was holding her belly, and Sam was alarmed to see that she was paper-white and sweating.  
  
“Uh… maybe… not so good,” she answered.  
  
“What’s wrong?” Sam asked sharply.  
  
“Maybe… maybe nothing,” she said, but Sam recognized the sound of hopeless denial when he heard it. “I think the fight just… tired me out, and my back hurts.”  
  
“We’re almost there,” Dean reassured her. “Sam will give you a backrub when we get there, and you can get some rest.”  
  
Dean seemed to be in denial, too, so Sam took charge. “Poppy,” he said plainly. “Do you think you’re having the baby?”  
  
Dean shot Sam an alarmed look as they waited for Poppy’s answer. It took a moment. “Maybe,” she said, in a tiny, meek voice.  
  
 _“What?”_ shouted Dean. “I thought we had like three more weeks!”  
  
“Two and a half,” said Poppy, and groaned suddenly.  
  
“Oh, no,” Sam whispered. “Dean, we have to get her to a hospital.”  
  
“We’re really far from one,” said Dean. “And here’s the cabin, just at the end of this drive.”  
  
“I wasn’t planning on having her in a hospital,” said Poppy. “I’m scared of hospitals, and doctors.”  
  
“Your parents were doctors!”  
  
“That’s why I’m scared!” shouted Poppy. “I know exactly what it’s like!”  
  
“What were you planning on doing, then?”  
  
“I had a midwife, and I took a natural childbirth class.”  
  
“Well, you might’ve considered telling us this before!” shouted Dean, exasperated. “Your midwife isn’t here, I sure as hell can’t do it, and I don’t know if Big Daddy here is gonna be a good substitute!” He elbowed Sam irritably.  
  
“I just need a little help,” Poppy whispered pleadingly. “I can do it… I know I can, if you just… ooooh!”  
  
“What?” said Sam, alarmed.  
  
“My water just broke!”  
  
Sam glanced at Dean just in time to see the pained look on his face. Dean opened his mouth and groaned, “My…” then cut himself off. Sam knew the next word was going to be “upholstery.”  
  
“OK, Poppy,” said Sam soothingly. “I can help you, if you tell me what to do, OK? You’ll be OK. We’re here. Dean, go in and… boil some water, or something. Make a nice clean place to lay her, and I’ll bring her in.”  
  
Dean had parked in front of the cabin, and Sam had never seen him flee anything in quite as much terror as he fled the Impala just then. Sam hoped he would actually do as he’d asked, and not just keep running.  
  
He got in the back seat with Poppy quickly, moving the front seat as far forward as it would go. He pushed her sweaty hair out of her face, and looked into her eyes. “Sam,” she whispered. “I’m scared.”  
  
The words, from fearless, indomitable Poppy, sent a jolt of terror through Sam. He covered it up as best he could. “I know,” he said. “But you can do this. I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”  
  
“OK,” she said, clinging to his neck as he carefully lifted her.  
  
He carried her into the cabin. Dean had been busy, laying out clean blankets on the one double bed and stoking the wood stove to boil water. Sam laid Poppy on the bed.  
  
She rested there for a moment, then clutched Sam’s arm. “This is OK for now,” she said. “But when I get to the later stages of labor, I’m going to squat.”  
  
“You are?” Sam was alarmed. Granted he knew nothing about childbirth, but he had never heard of this.  
  
“Yes. Gravity will help me. You need to make a pile of pillows and blankets under me, in case you don’t catch the baby when she finally comes. But I want you to catch her, Sam.”  
  
“I will,” Sam promised shakily.  
  
“But it might be hours before I get that far—ah!” She cried out in pain. Sam was frantic. The sound of her pain cut into him like razors. He couldn’t bear it.  
  
“You’re gonna have to calm down. Childbirth hurts. That doesn’t mean anything is wrong,” Poppy said with fraying calm, as though reciting something she’d been told many times, but wasn’t sure, at that moment, that she believed.

“Now, ummm… sterile conditions,” she continued. “Good energy. Peaceful environment. Ah!”  
  
She didn’t scream like women did in the movies. Her small, pained sounds were much worse to Sam’s ears.  
  
He and Dean followed all her instructions, but it soon became clear that things were not going as she’d hoped. It went on for hours. Her pain increased until Sam wept, begging her to let him take her to the hospital, but she couldn’t be moved. Dean finally cursed and left, saying he would kidnap a doctor or a midwife if he had to. “Call me if anything happens,” he said on his way out the door. “I’ll be back with help as quick as I can.”  
  
“Sam,” Poppy whispered. It was the first time in over an hour that she’d spoken. “Something… something is really wrong… I’m sorry. I was just sure I’d be healthy—I always have been—I was sure I could do this…”  
  
“How can you say you’re sorry? I’m the one who should be sorry. I got you into this, and if I hadn’t come back—”  
  
“If you hadn’t come back, a demon would’ve taken my baby!” Poppy whisper-shouted. She was trying to yell, but clearly didn’t have the strength. “Sam… if I die, you don’t have to keep her. You can take her somewhere Crowley will never find her, and let her be adopted. Just make sure they’re nice people… and maybe you can look in on her now and then, make sure she’s OK. Like when she turns six months old…”  
  
Poppy moaned in a resigned way; she seemed acclimated to the pain. Sam wanted to moan with her. “I won’t let you die,” he whispered. “I… have one more idea.”  
  
He knelt on the floor next to the bed, still clutching her hand. He prayed as hard as he ever had in his life, mostly without words, but then he said aloud, “Castiel. Cas, I swear. I swear I’ll do anything you ask, forever, and I’ll never ask for anything from you again, if you help me now. Help Poppy. I know I’m tainted. But I gave up my life. I’d give it up again now…”  
  
“I was on my way, Sam,” said a familiar voice. Poppy gave a hoarse whisper-shriek of shock as Sam looked up. “I arrived after your fight with the demons, but it took me some time to find you afterwards.”  
  
Sam had never been so glad to see the angel, but still—even in the midst of all this terror and desperation, he felt that there was something off about him. Shifty, like he was… _lying._ He couldn’t understand why he would lie about this, but right now it didn’t matter.  
  
“Please help her, Cas. She can’t… the baby. It’s mine, did you know that? Is it going so badly because… does the baby have a soul, Cas? Is it hurting her because of the demon blood? Will it be normal—human?”  
  
Cas was looking at Sam with a strange combination of emotions on his face. Sam could swear he looked _guilty,_ but perhaps it was just the intense compassion that was almost pity. “A soul is not made by the joining of human flesh, Sam. She has a soul.”  
  
He turned to Poppy, and laid his hand on her forehead. She gave a great gasp and immediately relaxed, her body releasing its pained arc and resting on the bed. “My name is Castiel,” he said quietly. “I… assume you’ve heard about me.”

“You’re really an angel,” Poppy breathed, awed.  
  
“Yes,” said Cas, though Sam saw him look away, as if he couldn’t meet her eye when he said it. “I must have a look inside you. It might feel strange, but it will not hurt.”  
  
“OK,” said Poppy, shifting her hips. She clearly thought Cas was going to look inside her in the midwife way, but he laid his hand on her belly, lowering his cheek close to it.  
  
“The baby is too large,” Cas said. “She cannot come out the conventional way. I can bring her out. Sam,” Cas said, and his manner was oddly, unwontedly stern. “I will remember the promise of your prayer to me. You must remember it, too.”  
  
Sam felt a chill. “I will,” he said.  
  
Cas laid both hands on Poppy’s belly and stood braced over her. He concentrated for a moment, then suddenly, Poppy gave a shrieking gasp, and there on top of her belly was a bloody, slimy, squirming mass. Sam had a moment’s thrill of pure horror before he recognized it as a baby, and then Poppy was laughing with relief, reaching for it.  
  
Cas held the baby above her, turning it over carefully. He was looking at it clinically, but Sam thought he saw a helpless sort of tenderness steal over him as he cleared the baby’s mouth and held it upside down. A thin but strong wail filled the cabin. Sam had no words for what this sound did to his heart.  
  
“Cut the cord, Sam,” said Cas, as Poppy struggled to sit up. Sam quickly and carefully complied; he’d been prepared for this part. He took the baby in his arms. She looked awful—wrinkled and alien under all the slime, but he’d expected that. In a deeper way, she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. All his fears of his child being born evil dissolved in an instant. She was Poppy, and she was him, and most of all she was utterly _herself_ —utterly human.  
  
“I have taken care of Crowley,” said Cas suddenly, breaking Sam’s reverie. “I have warned him not to pursue the child or its mother, and I will force him to obey. Nonetheless, there are precautions we should take.”  
  
He turned to Poppy, who was staring at him in awe, slightly tempered by something Sam could not identify. “I can give the child protection,” he said. “Sigils to repel demons, written on her bones. It should make her safe. I can perform this operation on you, as well.”  
  
“Will it hurt her?” Poppy asked, reaching to take the baby from Sam’s arms.  
  
“No.”  
  
Sam watched as Cas put the sigils on the baby and Poppy. Poppy did not react at all, and the baby only squirmed and made an odd little sound. Sam went to the stove to get the heated water; he needed to clean the baby up. When he turned around, Cas was gone.  
  
“Not much of one for goodbyes, is he?” Poppy asked, and just then, Dean came bursting through the door, a bewildered-looking woman in tow.  
  
Dean seemed relieved that he’d missed the whole thing. Sam pulled him aside and told him about Cas while the woman, an obstetric nurse Dean had bribed into coming out to the cabin, cleaned up the baby, all the while talking about how it was just like a man to put up a huge fuss, when this was clearly a nice, normal birth; she’d never seen such a healthy mom and baby. She had even brought a birth certificate. Sam came back to Poppy’s bedside as she was filling it out.  
  
“Father’s name?”  
  
“Sam Winchester.” Sam winced; he’d meant to tell Poppy she shouldn’t use his real name anywhere, but his worry was eclipsed by gladness. If he could be himself nowhere else in the world, perhaps he could be himself to his child.  
  
“And what would you like to name her?” The nurse smiled at Poppy.  
  
Sam looked at Poppy curiously. He’d asked her this before, and she’d been uncharacteristically grumpy about it. In addition to refusing to talk about the baby’s future, she’d insisted she couldn’t know what to name her until she met her.  
  
“Hope,” Poppy said instantly. She squeezed Sam’s hand and met his eyes. “I think that’s what she needs to be, to you,” she said. “And to me, too.”  
  
The nurse had brought some supplies, which was fortunate. Sam had had no idea of the bewildering array of things a baby needed, apart from diapers. The nurse helped them get settled, and instructed them sternly not to keep the baby in that filthy cabin for any length of time. Dean then took her back to town, content and well-paid, and they all settled in with the baby, getting used to her presence.  
  
Despite the nurse’s admonition, Poppy was reluctant to leave the cabin. She said they could rest up there while she decided what to do, and sent Dean into town for supplies, including a car seat.  
  
Sam did everything he could. He changed Hope’s diaper every time, and got up with her when she cried, though Poppy insisted this wasn’t necessary, since only she could feed Hope. They fell into an easy rhythm of things, but after a few days, Sam approached Poppy after she’d put Hope to sleep in the new bassinet Dean had brought.  
  
“Poppy,” he said seriously. “We can’t keep this up forever. We have to find a place for you and Hope.”  
  
“I know,” Poppy said sadly.  
  
“I wish…” Sam took her hand. It was awkward. He loved Poppy, but not in the way he should love the mother of his child, and that tormented him. He wanted, desperately, what he could never have. “I wish I could really be her father. But you know I can’t. And the longer I stay with her, the harder this will be.”  
  
“I know that, too.” She smiled at him. “You know, Sam, I don’t think I’d even want that. I’m ready for something new, and I want to make all the decisions myself. I know that, if things were different, you’d be a great father.” She squeezed his hand. “But it feels right for it just to be me and Hope. And when she’s old enough, I’ll tell her about how her father saved the world. You’ll come by and visit sometimes, I know. When it’s safe. But I don’t expect that will be very often.”

“I’ll send money, too,” Sam said. He had to say it. He knew it wasn’t what Poppy cared most about, but the guilt over that part of it lingered.  
  
“That will help. But we’ll get by, Sam. I’m an independent woman. And I’ll always have my water balloons.”  
  
Sam laughed. “Yeah, we’ll make sure there’s a baptismal font nearby.”  
  
They made plans to leave in two days. Poppy had settled on Missoula, Montana as the place she wanted to go. She had spent a few weeks there with her family one summer and loved it, and always wanted to go back, saying it was the most peaceful place she’d ever been.  
  
“Little bit redneck, though, isn’t it?” asked Dean.  
  
“Well, it’s better than the South. And I don’t have any associations with it, and it’s nice and remote. I don’t think anyone will look for me there.”  
  
Sam and Dean packed the Impala carefully. It had never been so full; it was amazing the amount of stuff they’d accumulated just to attend to Hope’s basic needs. It was odd, seeing pastel fleece blankets, pacifiers, and other baby paraphernalia nestled against machetes and shotgun shells.  
  
A road trip with a baby was a different animal, too. Sam and Dean would have driven straight through, switching drivers instead of stopping for the night, but instead, this trip involved three hotel nights and several stops each day. But eventually they made it to Missoula.  
  
It felt strange, to be looking at things from the long-term perspective. They found Poppy a little house to rent, surprised at how dirt cheap it was in this part of the country. They helped her set everything up. They hustled pool in Missoula, and in other nearby towns, to make a stockpile of cash for the things Poppy would need. She teased them about it, but expressed deep gratitude nonetheless.  
  
“You didn’t have to do all this,” she said to Sam, after Sam had paid the guy who delivered Hope’s new crib. “I would never have had all this on my own.”  
  
“You shouldn’t have to _be_ on your own, and you also wouldn’t have had to move if it weren’t for me,” he replied.  
  
“I also wouldn’t have Hope,” she said. Sam couldn’t help smiling at that.  
  
They drew every kind of protection they could conceive of on the little house. They were glad that Bobby, in South Dakota, was within decent driving distance, and after they’d told him where they were, he surprised them with a visit. He doted on Hope, helped them with new ideas for protection, and added to the stockpile of weapons he insisted Poppy learn to use. Sam couldn’t help thinking it was a good thing they were in Montana, where guns were so commonplace that Poppy’s stockpile would seem unremarkable.  
  
“You’re a crack shot, girl. Don’t let those skills get rusty,” Bobby told her. Sam’s heart lifted when he promised Poppy he would visit again in a few months.  
  
They said their goodbyes finally. Bobby had brought them wind of a case they really needed to take. Sam knew that leaving here was almost as hard for Dean as it was for him, but Dean wouldn’t admit it. He’d left the night before with a muttered assertion that he was going to town to get a little action, and that he’d be back when Sam was ready to leave.  
  
Sam stood on the front porch with Poppy, at a loss for words. He had held Hope for hours while she slept, not knowing what else to do to assuage the need he felt _not_ to do what he was going to do. It was wrong to leave her, but it was right, too. It was the only thing.  
  
He looked down at Poppy. If he was ever going to kiss her, now would be the time. He didn’t. It wasn’t right, and could never be enough. He held her tightly instead, bending his knees to press his face into her shoulder to hide his tears.  
  
“It’s all right, Sam,” she said, touching his face gently. “Everything is all right.”  
  
He nodded and stood back, taking her hands. “Call me, anytime you need anything,” he said.  
  
“I will. You take care of yourself, and be safe—you and Dean.” She waved at the Impala, where Dean waited.  
  
Sam nodded and drew away. He gave her one last look over his shoulder. She was smiling.  
  
“Sam,” she said quietly as he walked down the front steps. “Remember, you can come back here anytime. Anytime you need some Hope.”  
  
~The End~


End file.
